


Malware

by interlude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Post-Season/Series 04, SPACE SQUAD, incorrect space science proabably, space thriller, spacekru, the ark is not safe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interlude/pseuds/interlude
Summary: Just a few months into Spacekru’s stay in space, the Ring begins to malfunction and life support systems start failing. Spacekru needs to learn to work together quickly if they want to live.If they don’t, the very place that had been their salvation just might kill them.(Canon divergent after season 4.)
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Raven Reyes, Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Monty Green/Harper McIntyre
Comments: 28
Kudos: 35





	1. Program Failure

**Part I: Program Failure**

Two months after they arrive in space, the lights flicker off without warning, and the Ring plunges into sudden darkness. Even the emergency light strips running along the hallway floors fail. Without the lights, and with only the darkness of space coming in through the windows, the Ring falls into a darkness so complete and impenetrable it seems to seep into the residents’ very skin.

Inside the room that hosts the algae farm, Monty, Harper, and Murphy halt. Harper, halfway through cleaning the filter inside the algae tank, freezes, afraid to damage it accidentally. Murphy waves a hand in front of his own face; it’s impossible to see, even just inches away from his eyes.

“Well, that’s not good,” he mutters and hears Monty’s answering snort from somewhere to his left.

“I hope they don’t stay off for long,” Harper says, her annoyance almost palpable. “I can’t move.”

“Neither can we,” Murphy says. “I can’t see a damn thing. I’d run into a wall if I tried.”

“You’re not stuck with your hand in the algae tank,” she snaps. She’s gotten used to digging around in it, but it’s far less enjoyable when she can’t see or move. The algae floats gently in the water, occasionally brushing up against her hand; without her sight, the sensation is startling every time. The hair on the back of her neck stands on end. She tries to carefully pull it free, but it bumps up against something and she falls still immediately, filled with panic. This is their only food source; she can’t risk it.

It’s as if Monty knows that Murphy is opening his mouth for a comeback – and in all likelihood, he does, considering Murphy and Harper’s daily arguments have become almost routine at this point – because he quickly interjects. “I’m sure Raven’s going to fix it now.”

“How the hell is she going to get there?” Murphy asks. No one answers him for a moment. The visual of Raven stumbling blindly down the hallway, running into walls and tripping over hidden obstacles, is all too easy to picture.

“Surely someone has a light of some sort,” Harper offers slowly, then shrugs, despite the fact that no one can see it. The other two hum in agreement. Neither of them sound very convinced.

But there’s nothing they can do to help – there’s nothing they can do at all but wait.

The silence that falls between the three is uncomfortable, made even worse by the utter darkness. Murphy fumbles with his jacket sleeve just for something to do, and the shuffling of the fabric is loud in the quiet room. The sudden blindness is irritating enough, but the ever-present tension between him and his current company grows worse without a job to focus on. He’s sure Harper and Monty’s silence is only because of his presence in the room; they’d probably have preferred to be trapped without him around. He can’t say he blames them; he still doesn’t really get along with either of them on the best days, and there’s no one he really wants to get trapped in the dark with other than Emori – who, incidentally, is the only one here he absolutely trusts not to jump him with his back turned.

“How much light does the algae need?” he asks, partially due to real worry, but mostly just to break the silence.

“More than this,” Monty answers. “But it can handle not having any for a little bit. I’ll start getting worried if they stay off for a couple hours.”

No one has to say they hope it doesn’t take that long, but Harper mutters, “They better not,” under her breath anyway.

Luckily, it doesn’t. After forty minutes of stilted conversation – topics ranging from how much they miss real food to what might be happening in the bunker – the lights flicker back on. The three of them blink into the sudden brightness, their eyes re-adjusting slowly.

Harper carefully pulls her hand free from the filter and out of the tank. The skin is pruny from the water. She shakes it dry.

“Well, that sucked,” Murphy voices, and the other two murmur their agreement. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.”

* * *

Bellamy is mending a pair of pants when the lights fail a second time. In the sudden darkness, he loses track of the needle and pricks his finger, then swears at the unexpected jolt of pain. Blindly, he drops the pants on the table in front of him and pulls his hand away, not wanting to get blood on the fabric, even if the wound is small and barely bleeding. It’s hard enough to wash clothing on the Ring; it’s nearly impossible to remove stains.

He’s sitting in what’s generally become known as the common area, where the seven of them sporadically gather during free time or for meals. Unfortunately, he’d been the only one present when the lights went out, and loneliness is quick to settle in beside the darkness.

For a few minutes, Bellamy waits in silence and weighs his options. Then, with a sigh, he pushes himself out of his seat and stumbles forward. He walks carefully towards where he believes the door to be, hands outstretched in front of him to avoid a concussion. The cold metal of the Ark walls brushes against his outstretched palms, and he feels along it until he finds the door.

He keeps his right hand on the wall as he makes his way through the hallway, trailing it along the walls so he has some sense of where he is. The darkness in the Ring is terrifying; Bellamy doesn’t think that he’s ever experienced a darkness so absolute before. There had always been some source of light aboard the Ark no matter the time, and even Earth at night had the moon and stars. This utter blackness is completely new and horrible; it makes him feel vulnerable and powerless.

After a few months aboard the Ring, he’s managed to form a complete mental map of the place. He’d never known Go-Sci Ring well when he lived on the Ark, since there had never been much reason for him to go there, so he’d made a habit of walking the halls and taking note of the place that would be their home for the next five years.

After all, supplies and resources are the difference between survival and death. It was crucial they take note of what they had available to them, and, if Bellamy was going to keep all of them alive until they could reach Earth again, it was important that he knew every inch of their new home. Survival is a team sport, of course – he knows it doesn’t lie entirely on his shoulders, but he can’t help feel responsible for the people he convinced to head back into space with him. It had been his idea to go get Raven that had landed them all here. 

And he can’t let anything happen to _anyone_ – not after – well. He shakes his head to clear his thoughts and knock the guilt away. It clings stubbornly anyways, as it always does.

Memorizing the Ring seems to be coming in handy now, at least. For the most part, he can remember which hallways to take even if he can’t see them – but it’s still slow going. At one point, he realizes he must have gone too far without turning and has to double back until he locates the hallway he needs with his hand.

Eventually, there is light up ahead, standing out like a beacon. As the shapes of the walls begin to take shape, Bellamy quickens his pace towards the light.

The system control room is lit by a multitude of computer screens. It’s a dim light, but it seems bright in the darkness. Raven stands in front of the screens, illuminated by the glow, eyes trained on the lines and lines of code scrolling by, her brow wrinkled with concentration, hands hovering hesitantly over the keys. She doesn’t look up as he enters the room.

“How’d you get here so fast?” he asks, because he’s amazed one of them made it here without hurting themselves, let alone two of them.

Raven waves a hand distractedly to her left where a tablet sits on the table beside her. “I always keep it with me. It took me too long to find this room last time. It’d be better if we had flashlights, but it works.” She worries at her lip with her teeth, eyes narrowing at something hidden within the code. All of it looks like nonsense to Bellamy.

He comes to stand beside her and studies her out of the corner of his eyes. It’s easy to read the exhaustion and stress lining her face, and he wishes he could help her carry the burden of repairing the Ring somehow. Monty can help her with the machinery, especially now that his hands are healed, but Raven’s the only one who can understand the various computer systems keeping everything running. Her time with ALIE had some benefits, at least.

“Any idea what’s wrong?”

Raven doesn’t reply, but he gets his answer in the way her face hardens.

Without warning, she slams a hand against the table beside her; the resulting bang echoes loudly through the room. Bellamy jumps, startled.

Raven breathes heavily. “I can’t read code the way I used to,” she admits quietly, like a dirty secret, voice straining between clenched teeth. “There’s whole sections I can’t even understand.”

It’s a lot like forgetting how to speak a foreign language you once knew, Raven thinks – like when her abuelita died and her mother stopped speaking Spanish completely and the words gradually faded from her mind, bit by bit, every year. She still has some of the vocab, and she can remember the basic structure, but she can’t speak it fluently like she could when she had the chip. Every day she seems to forget a little more.

“If I still had ALIE in my head,” she starts.

“You’d be dead,” Bellamy interrupts. It’s a simple answer, as if it isn’t the complicated thing she’s made it out to be – as if she doesn’t spend hours debating if the threat of death due to ALIE’s code was worth the knowledge it gave her.

Back on Earth, she hadn’t thought so. Anything was worth not dying, right? But here in space, when their very lives might depend on it, ALIE’s code seems so much more tempting; she almost feels regretful for destroying it.

“But I’d know what’s happening.” She wants to cry. Or scream. Her frustration grows inside her like a wild animal, vicious and untamed.

“That’s not worth your life, Raven.”

“If the Ark is malfunctioning, it might cost _everyone_ their lives,” she snaps. She wants to be angry at something besides herself; Bellamy’s just an easy target.

He doesn’t take it to heart. Instead, he places a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and Raven can’t help but think Bellamy is a better friend than she is. She feels guilty for that too.

“You’ll figure it out.” His voice rings with certainty. She wishes she could believe him, but optimism grows harder and harder for her to grasp, disappearing beneath the pile of problems the Ark throws at them. She’d promised them safety on the Ring, but she’s terrified she won’t be able to deliver. After escaping Grounders and Mountain Men and Praimfiya, is her incompetence going to be what kills her friends?

After almost an hour, the lights flicker back on by themselves, just as they had the last time, and Raven isn’t any closer to understanding why.

* * *

The third time almost goes completely unnoticed. It’s what passes for nighttime aboard the Ring, and, in a rare occasion, all seven occupants are asleep at the same time. The malfunction might have been missed entirely if the heating hadn’t shut off as well.

It grows very cold over the next few hours.

Harper wakes with a start, the clicking sound of her chattering teeth hitting her ears before she’s fully aware of herself. Her body is shaking with the cold, and she grabs at their blankets, curling herself under them in search of warmth. It takes her a moment to register the weight on the other end of the bed shifting as Monty goes to stand, but as she does, she reaches blindly towards him.

“Why’s it so cold?” she asks groggily, teeth still clicking together. 

“I think the heating shut off again,” he replies softly.

Sudden light fills the room. Harper squeezes her eyes shut against it and rubs a hand over her face. Even her skin feels icy. Slowly, she opens her eyes again, blinking as they adjust. Monty’s holding an emergency flashlight in his hand – one of the few they’d managed to find after the second malfunction – and he’s pulling on his jacket.

“I’m going to go help Raven. Go back to sleep.”

“I’ll try,” she says, knowing it will likely be useless until it warms up a bit more. Luckily, they’d all stockpiled extra blankets in their rooms after the first few nights onboard the Ring when all the programs had been finicky and the heating unit had struggled. She piles all of them on top of herself and hopes that Monty and Raven can figure things out quickly.

By morning – or at least, what feels like it might be morning, though it’s hard to tell without any light at all – Harper gives up trying to sleep. She’s done little more than shiver for the past several hours, and, even if she can’t help the others, getting up and moving might warm her body up more than lying here will.

They don’t have another light in their room, so she uses the walls to find her way in the dark, wandering aimlessly with nothing but a prayer to help her find where Raven and Monty are. She gets lucky – as she turns a corner, she sees two figures illuminated by their own flashlight. Emori and Murphy stare back at her in confusion. Murphy looks even grumpier than normal, his hair a wild mess and his face wrinkled with a deep frown. Emori beside him is bundled in several blankets, nearly hidden away entirely beneath the fabric, her eyes and nose the only part of her exposed. She’s still shivering.

“Do you know what the fuck is happening?” Murphy asks.

Harper shakes her head. She wishes she had thought to bring a blanket like Emori. Her teeth are still chattering. “Monty went to go help Raven. I’m trying to find them.”

Murphy glances at her empty hands and raises an eyebrow. “How were you going to find them without a light?”

Like usual, it’s taken Murphy very little time to make her want to hit him. She’s starting to think it’s his only real talent. “Monty took ours. But I didn’t want to just stay in the room.”

“We can all go find them,” Emori says, though it’s hard to understand her with how violently her teeth are chattering. Murphy wraps an arm around her and rubs at the giant mass of blankets where her shoulder might be. She leans into it. Harper can’t help but stare; it’s almost sweet – or it would be, she thinks, if it was anyone but Murphy.

They make an awkward traveling party. The only sound accompanying them are their footsteps and the chattering of teeth, all three too unsure of their company to speak much. Uncomfortable as it is, Harper’s grateful for it. She has a hard time stomaching Murphy on his best days, and he’s clearly pissed off. The cold is bad enough; it’s a relief to not be forced to suffer Murphy’s stupid comments along with it.

Eventually, they hear talking in the distance and follow the sound into the only other area of the Ring with any light. Inside they find the others. Raven, with a blanket slung over her shoulders like a cape, is typing furiously at the keyboards of one of the computers, looking frazzled and angry. Her hair is loose for once, and Harper finds it an odd sight; she can’t recall ever seeing it loose from its ponytail before.

Monty hovers at Raven’s shoulder, wrapped in his own blanket and clutching the ends close to keep any air from burrowing into the cracks. His head is bent low, watching the lines of code appear on the monitor as Raven types.

Bellamy stands beside them both, without a blanket of his own and clearly suffering for it, absentmindedly rubbing his hands up and down his arms to try and warm them. Echo is also there, standing apart from the others and away from the light, tucked into the shadows of the room. She’s clearly handling the cold the best of all of them; she wears the cloak she had first arrived in when she’d come to save them before Praimfiya and it seems to provide enough warmth for her, as she’s not shivering or moving to warm herself up. Harper wonders if it’s because she grew up in a land known for its ice and snow, or if she’s just good at hiding her discomfort.

“Hey,” Bellamy says as he turns to watch them enter. “What are you guys doing up?”

“It’s fucking freezing,” Murphy snaps. “How the hell are we supposed to sleep like this?”

“I’m working on it,” Raven snaps back, not even turning to look at him. “If you’re not going to be any help, leave the room.”

Murphy raises his hands in surrender, even if she can’t see them, and takes the hint. He takes a seat on one of the chairs and slouches low in it, keeping his mouth blissfully shut.

Harper goes immediately to Monty, and he automatically raises an arm with half of the blanket for her to duck under with him, nestling close to his side as much for heat as for comfort. He smiles at her; it looks strained. “Any progress?” Her heart sinks into her stomach as he shakes his head. Raven grunts out a sound that might also be a no, though it’s hard to tell. It could as easily be a reaction to what she’s reading.

“Raven has a bit of an idea what’s happening, though,” Bellamy says, in an obvious and unsuccessful ploy to get their spirits up. In the dim light, Harper can make out the dark circles carved under his eyes and the wrinkles in his brow she swears hadn’t been there before the Ring. He goes back to rubbing furiously at his arms.

“Care to share with us?” Murphy asks.

“Actually trying to concentrate,” Raven mutters.

“You want me to drag him out of the room?” Harper whispers to her, only partly joking. If he’s distracting Raven, she won’t hesitate to kick him out – or find some other way to shut him up. Knocking him out for a few hours just might help improve everyone’s mood.

Raven’s concentration on the code breaks just long enough for her to smile at Harper.

“Oh,” Bellamy says suddenly in surprise, drawing Harper’s attention. “Thanks.” She turns in time to see him accepting one of Emori’s blankets from her. Harper wonders just how many she has on her; there seem to still be at least two left.

“You looked cold,” Emori explains, shrugging, the movement nearly masked beneath her layers. Then, she moves back to Murphy’s side, pulling up a chair beside him.

Harper keeps watching her for a moment, thrown by the gesture. She doesn’t know Emori well, but it was hard to trust anyone who was close with a person like Murphy.

“Dammit!” Raven’s sudden shout makes all of them flinch. A wordless groan of frustration bursts from her mouth, and she scrubs aggressively at her face, dragging a hand back through her hair roughly. There’s a beat of silence. Then, she turns her chair around to face the room.

“It’s like a power surge,” she explains. “There’s some program running that’s taking up a lot of power – only I can’t figure out what it is or how to shut it off. And it’s not exactly a power surge because if the lights were just blowing out, they’d stay off until I fixed them. But they come back on shortly after whatever program it is stops running. It’s like –“ She breaks off with an agitated sigh, fumbling for words. “It’s like the Ark’s intentionally shutting the lights and the heat off to divert power to this other function.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Monty says slowly, face scrunched up in thought.

“You’re telling me,” Raven mutters.

“Mind sharing with the class?” Murphy asks, eyeing them and the computers behind them warily.

“Well,” Monty says slowly. “The Ark shouldn’t be able to process something like that.” He turns to Raven. “Right?”

“No. At least, I didn’t think it could – but I’m a mechanic, not a programmer. I never worked on the computer systems. But that level of programming – no, the Ark shouldn’t be able to do that.”

“I’m still lost,” Bellamy says after a moment. “What do you mean the Ark shouldn’t be able to do this?”

“It – “ Raven hesitates, trying to find the words. She glances at Monty and looks relieved when he takes over.

“If what Raven thinks is happening is true, that means that the Ark computer system is currently deciding which programs to shut off to divert power to another function. But no one would have ever programmed it to shut off the lights and heat, no matter what else the computer needed to do. So the fact that it’s doing that means the Ark _itself_ is making a decision of which programs to turn off.”

“It can think?” a quiet, terrified voice asks. The rest of the room startles and turns at once towards Echo, as if they’d all forgotten she was there at all. What little they can see of her face in the shadows of the room looks pale, eyes blown wide with terror. She chances a glance towards the computer screens, shifting her stance slightly towards something more defensive.

“Well, that’s just it – it shouldn’t be able to. Some computers can, just not this one.” Echo doesn’t look very reassured. Neither do any of the others. They eye the screens with suspicion. “Someone must have programmed it this way before they left,” Monty concludes, looking at Raven.

She shrugs. “I guess. Maybe if they thought they were all going to be on Earth and needed it to still run some program, they’d tell it it’s okay to turn off life-support systems.”

“Life-support systems?” Emori asks, panicked.

Raven waves a hand at her that’s less comforting than it’s meant to be. “We’re fine. As long as none of us freeze, it’s not life-threatening yet.”

“What about oxygen though?” Murphy asks. “That’s life-threatening.”

“I don’t know,” Raven snaps. “It’s not like I can predict what’s going to break down next.”

“Oh, real _fucking_ great.”

“You want to get up here and do better?” Raven nearly yells. “Be my _fucking_ guest, Murphy.”

“Alright, alright, stop,” Bellamy steps between them. The blanket tumbles from his shoulders. “Right now it’s just the lights and heat, right?”

Raven nods stiffly. “Right now,” she agrees.

“So we’re in no danger of dying just yet,” Bellamy concludes.

“Extreme cold is dangerous,” Echo argues. “And none of you sky people are built for it.”

“And the algae needs light and heat to survive; without that we’re dead too,” Monty adds.

“Okay. But the last two times the lights came back on automatically. So we just wait it out.”

“We could build a fire,” Echo suggests, as Monty shakes his head at Bellamy’s suggestion.

“Too much heat fluctuation will _still_ kill the algae,” he argues. “This can’t keep happening.”

A high-pitched, nearly hysterical laugh draws all eyes to Murphy. He’s hunched over with his head in his hands. “I’m going to starve to death anyways,” he snorts, unaware of the eyes on him. “Should’ve stayed in the fucking lighthouse.”

Emori crowds closer to him, whispering something in his ear. He shakes his head slightly, but it doesn’t seem to improve his mood.

Not that anyone feels in the highest of spirits. Monty’s prediction seems to clog the air, making it harder to breathe.

“No, we’re not,” Raven says finally, resolute. She turns back to the screens and resumes digging through the code. “I won’t let us.”

* * *

No one sleeps much that night. In the morning, they’re all still huddled in blankets in the Earth Monitoring Systems room, Echo alone in her corner, Murphy and Emori wrapped around each other near the door, Harper drifting off in her own blanket cocoon, Monty passed out in a chair, and Bellamy trying not to fall asleep on his feet as he stands dutifully at Raven’s side.

“I’M THE FUCKING BEST!”

Raven’s shout makes them all jump. Murphy knocks his head on the wall with a loud bang. Monty falls out of his chair. Echo sits up with a knife in her hands.

“You’re what?” Monty asks groggily as he pulls himself up.

Raven spins to look at them all. The pride on her face nearly masks the exhaustion. “I know what’s happening,” she tell them, voice giddy.

“Well don’t leave us hanging,” Murphy says, rubbing at his head.

“The Ring is shutting off the lights and heat to divert power to the satellite. It keeps trying to send a message to Earth.”

“Why?” Bellamy asks.

Raven shrugs. “Not sure. I don’t even know what the message is. I think maybe the Ark tried to get in contact with Earth before they left, and the computer systems just keep trying to send the message. I’m not sure why it’s turning off life-support systems to do it, but that’s what’s happening. And we can stop it.”

The room, as one, exhales a breath of pure relief.

“It’s a little complicated, though,” Raven adds. “There’s some kind of block keeping me from turning off the satellite or stopping the message from sending, and I don’t know enough programming language to get around it. But I have another solution. We can manually disconnect the Satellite. If the Ark can’t access it, it should hopefully stop trying to send the message until I can figure out how to stop it completely.”

“How do we do that?” Harper asks.

“Spacewalking.” She turns to look at Bellamy hopefully. “But I need someone to come with me.”

“Of course,” he tells her, as if surprised she even had to ask.

* * *

They all gather in front of the airlock to see Raven and Bellamy off.

Raven dresses herself with easy, practiced motions, then helps Bellamy pull his suit and SAFER pack on, quickly walking him through how to use it. She fits their helmets on, raps on Bellamy’s just to see him jump, then gives him a grin and motions for the airlock. He follows her into it and Monty closes the doors behind them.

“Alright,” Raven starts, her voice coming in through the radio as she secures Bellamy’s tether onto his suit. “Monty, we’ll be able to talk to you the whole time we’re out there. This should be a fairly easy fix.” She reaches for her own. “Bellamy, we’re going to –“

The doors to the airlock fly open without warning.

Within seconds, Bellamy and Raven are gone.


	2. Virus Located

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning, this chapter involves graphic description of a pretty bad injury. So there's a bit of gore.

**Part II: Virus Located**

There is a beat of startled silence in the airlock room. Then, there is chaos.

“Monty, what the fuck?” Murphy yells, face sickly white in the artificial glow of the fluorescent lights. Beside him, Emori clutches at his arm in white-knuckled panic, her mouth a hard, thin line. Her eyes dark quickly over the airlock, left to right, then back again, circling and searching.

Echo spits a string of curses in Trigadesleng; they add a stilted, ugly backbeat to the cacophony already filling the room – Murphy’s yelling, the heavy, panicked breathing of five different bodies. Suspiciously absent amongst the chaos is the screeching sound of alarms, and if any of the Ark-borne kids had the peace of mind to be aware of that, they might have found it odd.

“That wasn’t me!” Monty yells. His eyes dance frantically along the buttons in front of him, hands hovering uncertainly, darting forward, then away again as he changes his mind over and over and over again. Finally, they settle on the button for the radio. “Raven! Bellamy! Come in!” He leans his face towards the speaker as he shouts, as if eliminating the space between his mouth and the radio will help the message reach them better.

“I’m good!” Bellamy’s voice crackles over the radio. He sounds winded. “Raven?” he barks.

There’s no answer. He yells it again.

The radio fizzes with white noise, empty space. 

Emori moves towards the windowed wall of the airlock, but Murphy catches her with an arm around her waist. He shakes his head wildly when she turns to look at him, his eyes locked on the doors that separate the rest of them from the vast openness of space.

“No,” he says, roughly, and Emori understands instantly. As one, they back away from the doors.

Echo, from where she stands slightly apart from the rest of them, watches and follows their lead. The three of them collect at the back of the room, huddled near the doorway to the hallway corridor.

Harper does the opposite. Ignoring Murphy’s warning, she runs directly towards the doors, leaning up against the glass to catch a glimpse of the two figures drifting out into space. She catches sight of Bellamy first, still tethered securely to the Ring, drifting and swaying like a bobber on a fishing line.

And then, beyond him, a figure drifting further away from the ship, untethered and without control – Raven.

Her voice comes over the radio just as Harper spots her. She sounds likes she’s still catching her breath, but she’s not panicking. “I’m fine,” she assures them. “Just surprised. Bellamy, can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” he answers. “How can I get to you?”

“I showed you how to control the SAFER pack – remember?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she says, and it’s incredible how calm she still sounds, even as she floats further and further away. “I need you to maneuver out towards me. You’re going to catch me, and we’ll reel ourselves in with your line – got it?”

Bellamy’s already moving by the time she finishes her question, propelling himself towards her. Raven directs him as he does, her instructions clear and concise. Her voice remains calm.

The rest of them keep silent, even as their hearts hammer loudly in their chests. They can barely see what’s happening through the open airlock, but they listen to Raven’s play-by-play as she directs Bellamy towards her. The minutes that it takes Bellamy to reach her seem to contain a millennia, but, finally, they hear his breathless exclamation. “Got you!”

The room breathes a collective sigh of relief.

“Hey, there,” Raven drawls, and it can almost pass for amused, if it weren’t for the way her voice hitches on the second word. “Wondered when you’d get here.” The joke is a little too honest to land, but Bellamy’s laugh crackles over the radio anyways.

Monty’s grin is shaky as he presses down on the radio button. “You guys okay?”

“We’re good,” Raven assures him. “We’re heading back to the Ark now.” The two shapes in the distance turn and begin their slow return. “Any idea what happened?”

“No clue,” Monty says. “I didn’t touch anything; the doors just flew open.”

“Okay,” Raven says. The word tapers off into uncertainty. She gathers herself and says again with more conviction, “Okay. Must be a glitch. There’s a lot of systems still fucked from the Ark leaving. I’ll check it out later.”

“Are you aborting the spacewalk?” Monty asks.

“We can’t. It’s too important to get the Satellite shut off. When we get back to the airlock, I’ll get tethered, and we’ll head back out.”

Like before, it happens in an instant, almost too quickly to process.

The doors of the airlock slam shut. Bellamy’s tether is caught between them.

The five occupants in the room startle. Two alarmed yelps come from the radio. “Woah, hey,” comes Raven’s voice. “What are you doing, Monty?”

“Nothing!” he snaps.

“Well, they shouldn’t just be opening and closing on their own.” Raven’s voice is tense with irritation, but it’s a frustration fed by worry, not anger. “You have to be doing something.”

“I’m not,” Monty argues, voice slipping through tightly-clenched teeth as he watches the doors. “I didn’t hit anything.”

The doors lurch open. Before anyone has the time to react, they shut again.

And then they open.

“What the hell?” Murphy voices as the five of them watch the doors repeat their cycle – open, closed, open, closed. The steel tether attaching Bellamy and Raven to the Ark is buffeted between them, slammed tight between the doors in an incessant attack.

There is no sound in the open airlock – no slamming of the doors, no clang of the tether – but somehow it feels loud regardless.

Emori glances at Murphy, motioning towards the open doorway; as one, they duck into the hallway, wary of the second set of airlock doors. They remain near the doorway to the room, watching the chaos inside as best as they can. Murphy’s hands are tight fists, shaking at his sides. Emori grips him close, worrying at her lip with her teeth, crafting a patchwork of dry skin and raw spots.

When Raven’s voice comes again through the radio, it is no longer calm. “What the fuck is happening, guys?!” Underneath her shouts, they hear Bellamy swearing.

“I don’t know!” Monty yells, breathing in frantic, staccato beats. “I’m not doing this!”

“Well, you need to stop it!” Raven barks. “The cable isn’t going to hold forever!”

Monty pushes desperately at a button on the control panel. Nothing changes. He hits it again. A third time. A fourth. Nothing happens. He hits it for a fifth time, this time keeping his finger on the button. “Raven, I can’t! I’m holding them open, and it’s not doing anything! Something’s overriding me!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Raven argues. “Nothing should be able to –“

Her voice cuts off with a click. The radio fizzles out. Monty slams a hand against it. “Raven!”

Silence.

A wordless shout of frustration bursts from his lips, something more animalistic and raw than human. The others in the room flinch.

Harper pushes herself hard against the airlock doors, searching desperately for her friends.

Echo takes one nervous, step forward, then thinks better of it and backs away, inching back towards Murphy and Emori.

“Is the Ark fucking possessed?!” Murphy shouts, clutching Emori close to him.

And with that, it’s Emori who puts the pieces together and realizes the truth with absolute, heart-stopping certainty.

“ _Yes_ ,” she breathes.

* * *

Raven and Bellamy hold each other tightly in space. The gloves make it hard to hold onto things, Bellamy finds, and the thought of losing his grip on Raven and letting her spin out into open space forces his heart into his throat. This can’t be happening – not now, after they already lived through the end of the world. Not now, after they already lost Clarke.

They sway slightly every time the doors close, the vibrations shaking through the metal tether.

 _Please hold_ , Bellamy begs it silently. _Please_.

They can’t hear the others anymore, and Monty isn’t responding to them calling, but thankfully they can both still hear each other. Raven’s rambling frantic voice fills Bellamy’s ears as she tries to work through the problem.

“This isn’t just a malfunction. This doesn’t – it doesn’t make sense. There’s never been a problem like this. There shouldn’t even be any program on the Ark that can make it act like this. It’s almost like it’s thinking for itself like – “

She stops.

For a heart-stopping moment, Bellamy thinks their radios have failed, too. But then Raven breathes in, almost painfully, her breath rattling loudly and terrified through their helmets.

Realization creeps a cold hand down her spine, raising goosebumps on her skin. She feels sick with understanding. “Like an AI. It’s acting like an AI.”

She doesn’t have to say more.

“ALIE,” Bellamy whispers. It sounds loud in Raven’s ears.

Her heart beats frantically within her chest; it feels like it’s going to burst through. _ALIE, ALIE, ALIE_ it pounds, taunting her.

She can’t even speak; fear clenches her vocal cords tight and holds her voice hostage. She just nods wildly in her helmet, hoping he can see her, so desperately glad he said the name first so she wouldn’t have to – so she wouldn’t have to taste in on her tongue or feel the shape of it coating her mouth, twisting her lips. She’s going to throw up. But she can’t. Not here.

She has the sudden, insane thought that she needs to wake up now, because surely this is a nightmare. And yet, the fear is so real that she can’t trick herself into believing it. She’s awake. Bellamy is with her.

And ALIE is on the Ring.

“Dammit!” Bellamy shouts. He pulls her closer to him, as much as he can. Their suits are large and cumbersome. “Dammit!” he yells again, at a loss for words, floundering in his inability to fight this threat. “Are we – can she do anything to us out here?”

Raven finds her voice. “Not more than she already has. Not unless she breaks the tether. But we have the SAFER pack. We’re probably better off here than on – “

She’s cut short with the most horrifying realization yet.

There are five people still on the Ring, and it’s the absolute worst place they could be.

* * *

Emori grabs John’s arm and pulls him away from the doorway. “Get out of the room right now!” she screams at the others. Echo doesn’t hesitate; she leaps for the door.

She isn’t fast enough.

As a precaution, the survivors of Earth some 97 years ago had designed the airlock room with an automatic emergency door that, in the event of the airlock doors ever malfunctioning, could seal the room off from the rest of the Ring. In the absence of the any wailing alarms, however, and with everyone’s attention focused on the airlock itself, none of the inhabitants of the room are prepared for this door to suddenly activate.

A large, grisly crack rings out.

Echo screams as the heavy metal door slams shut on her leg, forcing her to the ground.

The sound echoes down the hallway, bouncing off the metal walls and ricocheting back with an ugly ferocity, and for a brief, startled moment, it is the only sound at all, as Murphy and Emori stare at the door from one side, and Monty and Harper from the other.

The only thing that keeps the door from separating them completely is Echo’s leg, caught against the floor, looking small and bent and far too thin to hold out for very long.

Harper is the first to snap into action. “Monty!” she yells. “Can we cut the power to the airlock doors?”

Monty blinks himself out of his shock, ripping his gaze from the gruesome sight of Echo’s trembling foot. “If we do they won’t open!”

“Exactly!” Harper screams, eyeing the remaining doors anxiously.

Monty runs for the control panel, searching for the wires. He doesn’t know which is which. Machinery has never been his wheelhouse the way it was Raven’s. “Bellamy and Raven won’t be able to get back in.”

“But we won’t get sucked out!” Harper argues, burying a trembling hand in his shirt.

On the other side of the room, Murphy and Emori try to push the automatic door back open, but it fights with them, pushing down as hard as it can. Echo beats a fist against the floor, biting hard enough on her lip to draw blood.

Monty runs a shaking hand over the wires. Which one? Which one would it be?

Murphy yells as he pushes harder against the door.

 _Fuck it_ , Monty thinks. He grabs all of the wires at once and rips them free.

The room plunges into darkness.

Murphy and Emori manage to push the door wider a fraction. With a scream of fury, Echo claws herself free and pulls herself into the hallway. With her leg no longer holding it open, the door falls shut, sealing the airlock room off from the rest of the Ring.

For a brief moment, the three of them lay panting in the hallway. Echo looks near tears, but she pushes them away. She punches the floor in pain, muffling another scream. Her leg is a mess, dark with blood.

Murphy pushes himself up and crawls back to the door. He tries again to lift it. It won’t budge. “Monty?” he shouts, pounding a hand against it.

There’s no answer.

“Monty?!” he yells again, pounding harder. The lights above them flicker. “Fuck,” he whispers. “MONTY!”

“We’re alive,” comes the muffled answer.

A frantic, hysterical laugh bursts out of Murphy’s throat. “Holy shit,” he says, letting his head drop forward to rest on the door. “Holy shit.”

It’s hard to make out what Monty says, but Murphy thinks he’s asking him to open the door. “Can’t,” he shouts back. “We might be able to find something to pry it open, though. Just hold tight!”

And then he remembers their other problem and turns back to Echo. She hasn’t moved, still curled against the floor, trembling with pain. Emori is hovering uncertainty over her leg, trying to push the fabric out of the way so she can see the damage.

Echo shoves her hand away. “Swego of!” she yells.

Emori snaps something back at her in Trigadesleng, then looks up at John. “I don’t think she can walk.”

“Great,” he says. “I can’t get the door open.”

“Pry it open,” Echo exhales through tightly clenched teeth. “You said.” She shifts slightly to look at him but freezes when it jostles her leg. She clenches her eyes shut and breathes deeply in through her nose.

“Right, I think we could find something,” Murphy says. “I think.”

“We have to,” Echo says. “To get Bellamy.”

“Yeah, if he and Raven aren’t already floating off into space,” Murphy scoffs. “Shit.” He pounds a fist against the floor, wincing when it makes contact. “What the fuck is happening?”

“ALIE,” Emori answers. Her face is paler than Murphy’s ever seen it. The tattoo stands out in stark contrast. “She transferred herself to the Ark when you tried to destroy her backpack. In Polis.”

Murphy’s stomach plummets to the floor. He remembers Emori pleading with him, begging him not to destroy it. He remembers the heat of the torches at his back as he’d held the spear high, struck paralyzed by the pain in her voice. And he remembers realizing he’d been played – that ALIE had just been using Emori to stall because she’d had a getaway plan.

He’d forgotten what that getaway plan had been.

“How can she be here?” Echo hisses. She spits a mouthful of blood onto the floor. Murphy hopes it came from her lip. “She was on Earth. Clarke killed her.”

“But she sent herself here. I don’t know how, but she did,” Emori insists. “I remember knowing that and understanding it then.”

Echo breathes in deeply. She pushes her hair away from her forehead where it’s sticking to the sweat collecting there. “Then how do we kill her _again_?”

Murphy looks desperately at Emori for answers only to see her looking desperately back at him.

She looks lost for words, so Murphy answers for her, “We don’t know.”

* * *

The good news, Harper thinks frantically, is that they haven’t been sucked out into space. The bad news is that they’re locked in a room dangerously close to open space with no power and no light.

She can hear Monty breathing roughly beside her and can feel the cool metal door beneath her fingers, but she can’t see a thing.

They’d heard Murphy’s muffled pounding on the other side after the door had shut – something about prying the door open, and she desperately hopes they’ll be able to, because she doesn’t think she and Monty stand much chance on this side of the door, blinded as they are. It’s a sobering thought to realize her life hangs in the hands an Azgeda spy, a Grounder thief, and John Murphy.

Maybe this is finally how she dies.

“We’ll be okay,” Monty says, as if he senses her thoughts. “It looks like everything is stuck now. The doors aren’t going to open.”

“Do you think he’ll let us out?” Harper asks. “Maybe he’ll just leave us in here to rot. And Raven and Bellamy outside and – “

“I don’t think so,” Monty interrupts her frantic thoughts. “I think I trust him. At least to try.”

“I hope you’re right.”

She feels Monty wrap an arm around her and pull her close, and she burrows gratefully into his side. His heart beats loudly in his chest; she can feel it thrumming through her skin, in time with her own. She takes a deep breath and tries to let it out slowly, but it stutters, hitching, and suddenly there are tears spilling over her cheeks.

“We’re going to be okay,” Monty says again, only this time she can hear the words for what they really are. It’s not optimism.

It’s desperation.

* * *

The best thing about open space is that it’s always given Raven space, no pun intended, to think. Raven knows that space is dangerous, but it’s never truly felt that way to her; instead it’s always felt like freedom – a place where she can spread her wings away from the crowded reality of the Ark and just _be_.

Right now, Raven lets herself sink into the peaceful quiet of the universe, closes her eyes, breathes deep, and thinks.

“It makes sense now,” she murmurs. “No one was trying to send a message to Earth. ALIE was trying to send _herself_ back to Earth. She only came here to escape being destroyed, but once Praimfiya hit, the satellites probably got damaged and she was trapped here with no way to complete her one purpose. She’s been trying to send herself back, but there’s nothing on Earth to receive the message. So she starts shutting off the other systems to divert more power to keep trying.”

“She wasn’t trying to kill us?” Bellamy asks. “Because we killed the version of her on Earth?”

“I don’t think so. She’s not human; she doesn’t get mad or want revenge. It probably didn’t even register to her that she was putting us in danger by shutting off the heat. The oxygen probably was next. She’s a program. She’s just trying to carry out her main objective.”

“Why turn off life support systems, though? Her main objective was making things better for humans. Wasn’t that the whole reason behind the City of Light in the first place?”

“Making things better on _Earth_. She was trying to make Earth better for humans. Becca never said anything about space. All ALIE cares about is getting back to Earth to start the City of Light again. She probably only attacked us because we were planning to shut off the satellite.”

“But she can’t hurt us out here. So we can go destroy it,” Bellamy says, voice steely with determination.

If only it was that easy.

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” she says helplessly. “It isn’t the main problem. ALIE is.”

“But how do we kill her again? Without the Flame?”

Raven can’t answer. For a blissful, delirious moment she images just shutting her eyes and ignoring it all and letting herself float away into space. She doesn’t want to die any more now than she had months ago, but she’s so, so tired of fighting.

“I don’t know,” she says finally.

* * *

They move slowly, but Murphy and Emori manage to drag Echo to Medical. They leave a trail of bright red breadcrumbs behind them, as the blood continues dripping steadily down Echo’s leg. She grits her teeth and bares it; since she was first injured, she hasn’t screamed once, and Murphy can’t help but be grudgingly impressed.

They help her onto a table, and she collapses back against it, completely spent. Her hair is soaked through with sweat now, and her face is ashy and pale. Her lip is a mess of bloody, ragged ends, and when she bares her teeth in pain, they’re red.

Emori tries once again to pull her pants away from the wound; Echo grunts and flinches. “We need to cut these off to see it,” Emori tells Murphy. He nods and starts digging through drawers.

He finds a pair of scissors and carefully cuts away the fabric. It’s heavy and sticky with blood, stained a deep red. When he pulls it away, the skin of Echo’s leg is just as dark. Emori uses a rag to clean the blood away and together, they observe the wound.

Murphy’s stomach twists with queasiness; he resists the urge to gag and look away.

A jagged piece of white bone is sticking through Echo’s calf, and the wound itself is deep enough that both of them can see the muscles beneath. There is already a violent bruise blossoming across her skin, purple and vicious and angry, darkening most of her calf.

Emori and Murphy look up at each other from opposite sides of the table with twin looks of uncertainty. They both know how to mend small wounds, but this is something else entirely.

“Do we just,” Murphy starts, then stops, swallowing deeply as he looks again at the misplaced bone. “Shove it back in?”

“Shove _what_ back in?” Echo snaps hysterically. She pushes herself up from the table so she can get a look at her leg. The little color that had been left in her face drains away immediately. She starts swearing frantically in Trigedasleng, dropping back against the table.

Emori stares down at the wound as she thinks. It’s still bleeding, and the blood they had managed to wipe away is being steadily replaced. Making a decision, Emori pulls her belt free from her pants and hands it to Echo. “Here,” she tells her. “Bite down on this.”

Echo grabs the belt and nods, looking determined. “Just do it,” she tells her.

Emori looks at Murphy. “I need you to find some bandages. As many as you can.” She grabs the scarf from off her head and pulls it free. Echo has half a moment to process the fact that it’s the first time she’s ever seen her without it before Emori bunches it into a ball and pushes down hard on the bone.

Echo lurches off the table, screaming through the belt in her mouth. Blood drips from her lip. She fastens her hands on either side of the table and grips it tightly, hard enough that her fingers hurt. When Emori looks up at her, hands still holding her scarf steady against the wound, Echo manages a nod.

Murphy does find bandages. Together, he and Emori wrap them around the wound, tight enough that they dig into the skin of Echo’s leg, but also tight enough to keep the bone down where it belongs.

Afterwards, they step back with red-stained hands. Murphy collapses onto the floor, his long legs sprawled out in front of him, his spine straining against the effort of holding him up. Emori pushes her hair away from her face, where it hangs freely without her scarf. The blue fabric sits in a bloody, forgotten heap on the floor away from her.

“Well,” Murphy says into the quiet. “What now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng Translations:
> 
> Swego of - Fuck off


	3. Moth in the Machine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I started strong and faltered the longer I went, like I tend to do with stories. Still aiming to finish this one, but looks like it's going to end up being more chapters than I originally planned. To all of you still reading, thanks for sticking around!
> 
> Also how are we all doing after that finale?

**Part III: Moth in the Machine**

They sit in the infirmary for a long time. At some point, Echo walks Emori through crafting a tourniquet above her wound. The bleeding stops, but the leg itself doesn’t look much better than it had previously, misplaced bones aside. None of them are doctors, and what little medical knowledge they have all gained in life experiences only goes so far. At some point, someone is likely going to have to address the looming elephant in the room: it might not be possible to fix the leg at all. 

But the moment to say that isn’t now; there are larger issues at hand, and Echo herself seems quite happy with holding onto blissful ignorance for a bit longer. 

“How long do you think we have before she turns off the oxygen?” Murphy finally asks, because the question won’t stop gnawing at his thoughts. It’s a horrible way to die, asphyxiation, and with how much it keeps dogging his footsteps, he’s starting to think it’s his destiny or something. 

Echo can’t muster up the energy to lift herself off the surgical table. The hair around her temple that had been soaked through with sweat earlier is starting to dry, the thin wisps near her forehead curling. She still hasn’t washed the blood off her hands. 

She’s a wreck, weakened with pain and pale with blood loss, but her voice is as unbending as steel when she speaks. “We kill her before she does.” 

Murphy scoffs. He lets his head fall back against the cool wall behind him and stares up at the fluorescent lights above them. Emori snuggles in closer to his side; his fingers close loosely around the fabric of her shirt, anchoring himself in the feel of her. “How?” he asks. “In case you missed it, our resident genius already got floated and Monty’s trapped behind a door we can’t open.” 

He tries not to think too much about Raven following his father into the cold emptiness of space. Is that how it had been with his dad? One minute there and the next gone, with scarcely the room to breathe between? 

“Face it, we’re doomed.” Emori’s fingers dig into his side, desperate to the point of being painful, but he doesn’t shake her off. “I don’t know a single thing about computers and you,” he gestures lazily at where Echo lies, “don’t even know what a computer is.” 

“I know what a computer is,” Echo snaps petulantly, but the unfamiliar way the word sits in her mouth betrays her. 

“I remember some of it from when I was chipped,” Emori speaks up suddenly, startling both of them. 

Murphy’s startled to hear her mention it; she’s never spoken of it since it happened, content to let the memory die completely. 

“What do you mean?” he asks. 

“How she works. Bits and pieces. I can remember small things.” 

“Do you remember enough to stop her?” 

“I,” Emori hesitates. She shrinks. “No, I don’t think so.” 

“Then why mention it?” Echo snarls, voice loud enough to echo off the walls around them. 

The shout snaps Emori into action, her body suddenly tense, vibrating with anger and energy. She nearly lunges for the other woman, but Murphy holds her back. If Echo is all they have left now, they can’t risk losing her too. 

“I know more than you do,” Emori snarls back from her place at Murphy’s side. And then she spits something in her native tongue that Murphy doesn’t even need to be told is an insult. Echo’s pale, sweat-streaked face contorts in rage. 

Echo’s weak and immobile, and Emori is furious and willing to fight. Murphy’s half-afraid Echo won’t last the night, with or without Emori acting on her anger. It will only be the two of them left, and he’s willing to face the end of the world with only Emori by his side, but a spaceship is a different beast than a lighthouse bunker, and it takes more hands than four to manage. 

“We need to get Monty and Harper out,” he says before he’s even fully processed the thought. But it’s true – that’s step one. They can’t do anything for Bellamy and Raven now, and they might not be able to ever do anything for Echo’s leg. Murphy’s not ready to try his hand at facing down a rogue computer program without killing them all accidentally. Which leaves Monty and Harper. 

“There has to be something we can use to pry the door open.” 

Maybe, if he says it with enough conviction, the universe will side with him for once. It’s never happened before, but there’s a first time for everything. 

* * *

One of the best things about being a mechanic on the Ark was knowing the place like the back of her hand. It’d been part of her training; she’d lost track of how many hours she’d spent pouring over schematics, memorizing rooms and the ins and outs of every station until she could answer any question Sinclair threw at her. 

She and Finn had often taken advantage of it, slipping into rooms and stations they’d had no right being in and out again before anyone knew any better. Raven had known the override code for every door – even the chancellor’s, though she’d never dared test that knowledge – and could navigate the maze of passageways with her eyes closed. Finn used to laugh, grabbing her hand and weaving his fingers between hers, goading her into showing him another new corner of their small home. 

The place in her heart reserved for Finn is still tender after all this time; prodding at it hurts something deep inside her, but it’s also reassuring. The fact that she can remember him and feel the hurt at all proves that ALIE isn’t in her head. 

Finn had brown eyes. He lived three doors down from her. He broke his toe when they were kids, and it was the first time she ever saw him cry. He grew his hair long when he was fourteen. When he smiled at her, it used to give her butterflies. When she watched him die, it felt like someone had ripped straight into her chest and torn away some vital piece of her. 

She holds the details tight like armor; she’s herself. ALIE hasn’t stolen this from her, and she won’t get another chance to if Raven has anything to say about it. 

She closes her eyes and pictures the schematics from all those years ago. 

“There’s another airlock on the other side of Go-Sci,” Raven tells Bellamy. They’d seen the lights go dark on the airlock several minutes ago, and Raven had known without even trying that their entry that way was blocked. “We might be able to get in that way.” 

The _might_ rings loud and clear through their headsets. Raven wants to take the word back, but she’s never been a liar. 

“Alright,” Bellamy says. “Lead the way.” 

They use the SAFER pack to float back towards the Ring, close enough they can both grab onto the outer wall. Bellamy’s getting more and more comfortable maneuvering with it, and Raven can’t help but feel proud of him. There are very few people she’d feel comfortable getting stuck in this situation with, but luckily Bellamy is one of them. She trusts him. 

“We’ll have to unclip you,” she tells him. Being out without a safety line is a terrifying prospect, but the line only stretches so far; even now, it’s pulled taunt, limiting Bellamy’s movement. 

They’ll make their way slowly, holding onto the Ring, she explains as she unhooks it and watches it drift lazily away from them with a lump in her throat. They’ll save the SAFER pack for any emergencies; she’s not sure just how long it will hold out, and she doesn’t want to waste it on coasting if there’s another option available. 

It will be slow going, dragging themselves along, but right now it’s the only option they’ve got. 

Get to the airlock, Raven thinks, making a list in her head and grounding herself in it. Find a way in. Then find a way to survive. 

All in all, it’s not a worse plan than coming to the Ring in the first place had been. She tries not to think too hard on how well that plan had gone. 

_Brown eyes_ , she mouths quietly to herself as they move forward. _Three doors down. Broke his toe_ _._

She keeps the mantra going the entire time. 

* * *

Emori and Murphy manage to find a sheet of metal small enough they can maneuver, but thick enough it might just be able to go toe-to-toe with the emergency door. Bounty in hand, they head back to the airlock room. Echo, unable to walk and little help as weak as she is, stays behind in Medical, though her displeasure at being left behind is strong enough to follow them into the hallway. 

Emori hasn’t spoken much aside from voicing the pros and cons of various tools they had found, and Murphy knows that means she’s terrified and unwilling to voice it. She’s already uncomfortable with the Ark on the best of days, the endless walls and unending machine hum too alien for her to ever fully settle into. 

“Hey.” 

He stops in the hallway before they reach the door to grab her gloved hand gently. When she looks up at him, he can see the red dotting her lips where she’s peeled them in worry. If his other hand weren’t holding the metal sheet, he’d rub it gently over her lips and wipe the blood away. Instead, he gives her free hand a gentle squeeze. 

“We’re going to be okay.” 

A frown twists her lips. Her eyebrows dig wrinkles into her brow. “You don’t know that.” 

He opens his mouth to lie, but swallows it back down before it can leave his tongue. He’s never lied to her, and now certainly isn’t the time to start. “No. But I want it to be true.” 

Emori softens. Her hand twists in his to hold it back as best as she can with the clunky fingers and thick glove. “Me too.” Her hand tightens. “Ai hod yu in.” 

Murphy doesn’t know much grounder, but he knows that much. Despite everything, he smiles. “Yeah. Me too.” 

And then, like nothing’s happened, they continue to the door, because sometimes, they both know, there’s nothing you can do but keep moving forward. 

* * *

The sound of footsteps and muffled voices announces the others’ return. 

Harper exhales noisily, relief bursting out of her, and Monty can’t help but echo her. They haven’t stopped talking since the others left, trading stories and every random thought that came to mind just to hear the sounds of themselves speaking. Without it, and without the feel of Harper’s skin pressed tight against his, a long warm line against his side, Monty thinks he might just lose his mind. The darkness around them is so complete it’s hard to know where he ends and the space around him begins; he feels like a very insignificant thing in the face of it. Harper must feel the same, because even wrapped up in his arms, she would reach a hand out blindly every few minutes just to feel for him and reassure herself he was still there. 

Monty presses his ear against the door. There are two voices, one a deep baritone that must be Murphy, and the other likely Emori, since he doubts Echo would be on her feet again so quickly. The screeching of metal against metal makes him flinch and pull his ear away, though he doesn’t dare move far from the door in case he loses it in the dark. 

“What do you think they’re doing?” Harper asks over the groaning sound. Distantly, they can hear labored grunting. 

“Trying to pry it open, I think.” 

Trying seems to be the key word, if the sound of Murphy’s sharp, angry curses are anything to go by. 

Harper and Monty listen carefully in silence, until the sound of falling metal and rapidly fading footsteps signals Murphy and Emori’s departure. 

Fear claws its way back up Monty’s throat. 

“They’re not leaving, are they?” Harper gasps. “They’re going to try again, right?” 

Monty places his ear back against the door; there’s nothing but silence on the other side. 

“They’ll try again,” he reassures, though he knows he has no proof they will. 

“What if they can’t get it open? What if we’re stuck in here?” 

Monty can’t answer; the fear is a thick ball in his throat. He shakes his head, but he knows Harper won’t see it. 

There was an old ghost story passed around the Ark when he was younger. When they were kids, and Jasper was taking refuge at his place once again, he’d whispered it to him while huddled up under the covers together, laughing when Monty spooked at all the right parts. 

An old astronaut from the first thirteen stations didn’t make it to the new Ark and was trapped alone in a powerless escape pod after trying to flee. For weeks, the astronaut sat alone with no radio and no lights, and with nothing but the emptiness of silent space for company. The astronaut began speaking to himself to hear his own voice echoing back, pretending it was another human being responding to him, creating imaginary characters to fill the loneliness. 

“And then one day,” Jasper had whispered. “When he spoke into the empty escape pod, something else spoke back.” 

That’s the way ghost stories always ended, with the realization that there’s something else out there. Monty’s starting to think that maybe the scariest part of the story wasn’t the ending, though; it was the rest of it. 

He buries his face in the gap between Harper’s shoulder and her neck. She smells like sweat and body odor, and despite the unpleasantness of the scent, he centers himself in it. It’s reassuring how undeniably and irrevocably human it is. He’s not the lonely astronaut floating through space alone, and, even as Jasper’s absence feels like a missing limb, Harper is still here beside him. 

“It was Murphy’s idea to come back for me the day of Praimfiya,” he confides. 

“Really?” He can’t blame Harper for the note of disbelief in her voice; it’d been how he’d felt when Bellamy assured him it’d had been Murphy who’d suggested the rescue mission in the first place. 

“Yeah. They’ll come back.” 

Monty still doesn’t have a lot of faith in John Murphy to be a good person, but he’s starting to think that maybe he deserves more faith than people give him. 

That little bit of faith isn’t misplaced. Soon enough, they hear the sound of footsteps and scuffling from the hallway. There’s a knock against the door, loud and deliberate. Monty knocks back. 

Murphy yells something he can’t quite make out. 

“What?” he yells back. 

Murphy repeats himself, but all Monty can catch is the word “door,” which isn’t very helpful. 

“I think he said get away from the door,” Harper says. 

Sure enough, when Murphy yells again, Monty can make out the words – and the rushed cadence of urgency. 

“Yeah, he did,” he says, grabbing Harper’s hand. 

As one, they scramble away from the door as quickly as they can on hands and knees, stumbling blindly towards the far wall, putting as much space between themselves and whatever rescue plan Murphy and Emori have concocted as possible. 

The door explodes. 

The sudden sound and light streaming in is almost an attack all its own, buffeting their senses. Monty blinks rapidly against the light, eyes tearing up with the strain of being able to see again. He can make out the shape of his hands and limbs, and he glances down, patting at himself to make sure he’s all still in one piece before turning to do the same to Harper, who’s rubbing at her own teary eyes. 

Her face is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, sweaty and pale and covered in dust, because he can see it at all. 

“Did you make a bomb?” Harper asks their rescuers weakly. 

Monty turns back to them. Parts of the door are still there, but the bottom has been wrapped and torn by the explosion, and there’s enough of a gap for them to squeeze through if they’re careful. Murphy’s smug face stares back at him from the other side. 

“Yup.” 

Monty can’t fight his own grin. A laugh bubbles up in his throat. “Surprisingly helpful.” 

“That’s twice I’ve had to save your ass now, Green. If we keep this up, I’m gonna develop some sort of complex.” 

When Harper gets to the door, Murphy reaches down to grab her hand and helps pull her free. She eyes him shrewdly as she stands, lips pursed against the thank you. Murphy doesn’t seem to notice, leaning down to help pull Monty through, who struggles a bit to squeeze through as easily as Harper had. A stray piece of metal scrapes across his shoulder, ripping the fabric there and drawing a thin line of blood. 

But he makes it through, out into the freedom of the hallway.


End file.
